Masquerade
by L.C. Li
Summary: [Complete] She hates him. He hates her. Apparently, that makes them perfect for each other. Dark Ez/Lux.


**MASQUERADE  
**_by L.C. Li_

**I.**

She despises him.

She despises him like she has never despised anyone in her whole life.

She despises the way he struts around like a constipated peacock, the way his hair stabs from his scalp like a phalanx of spears, the way his laugh sounds like someone set a mile of chalkboards and tugged five rows of fingernails down them—everything about him sends a shudder down her spine and bile up her throat.

So, after the Demacian scrim against Piltover (in which Piltover barely won, which makes her grind her teeth and stomp her foot, because her damn brother _knew _that she hated Ezreal, but apparently he'd had too much to drink because he wouldn't take the scrim seriously and stop _spinning_), she makes sure to sidle up next to Ez, nice and close, because the only thing that trumps her hatred of Ez is his hatred of her.

"Nice game," she says sweetly. Sugar-sweet. Slathered with honey. It'll make him choke.

He doesn't budge, but the lines around his eyes are tight with annoyance. "Heh, of course it was," he says, with his signature cocky grin. She wants to cut off his lips and burn them. "I was in it."

She laughs, high-pitched, right in his ear. He doesn't flinch. "The upcoming Demacia-Piltover vs. Noxus match lists both of us! Isn't that wonderful?" _I will make your life hell._

"For you," he says. "You just have to stand there and you'll be carried to victory." He laughs in her ear. It scrapes against her eardrum but she doesn't budge.

She keeps her face placid, but inside, she is seething. He's won this round, and they both know it. Nothing remains but to back off... and win another day.

"Well, I _do_ wish you the best of luck," she says with the most exaggerated curtsy in the history of Valoran. "Don't forget the training tomorrow!"

And she skips out, humming the tune that they were playing in the lobby on repeat for 3 hours while Ezreal had to wait there. His hands instinctively come up to his ears.

Maybe it's a tie after all.

::-::

During practice, she and Ez are forced to lane together in bot. She rushes a Mejai's and steals every bit minion gold she can.

They end up losing. But it was a worthwhile loss. Seeing Ezreal scowl and sulk made anything worthwhile.

::-::

The match comes before she knows it, and her summoner marches up to her with a dark scowl on his face.

"You're laning with Ezreal," he says. "Stay in the lane, poke and peel, and _don't_ cause any trouble."

She twirls her baton and sets it on her shoulder. "But of course," she says with a wink. "We're facing _Noxians_."

Because she knows. The only thing that trumps her hatred of Ezreal _and_ Ezreal's hatred of her is their shared hatred for the Noxians.

And that's saying something.

There seems to be some sort of tacit agreement between them as they play the lane with unmatched concentration. There is only one thing they can both agree that they share skill in: being an annoyance.

They crush the lane. By pure force of will. And spam laugh in the enemy fountain.

A brief thought passes her mind:_ Too bad. Perhaps in another life, we would have made an unstoppable team. _

* * *

**II.**

He despises her.

He despises her like he has never despised anyone in his whole life.

He despises the plastic way she smiles, the way her laugh sounds like a cheese grater against shards of glass, the way she tosses her hair so it reflects the sun and blinds him, her stilted kangaroo stride, her beady, unnatural eyes. Everything about her just makes him say fake, fake, fake, and he doesn't want to be within a mile of her because he feels like he's being infected with whatever's gripped her.

But fate, or at least the League High Command, appears to be wholly unsympathetic to this, and thus sets Lux as his regular training partner.

"Natural lane synergy," they say. "Harmonious kit design. Personality traits hint at a fruitful partnership."

Sure. Fruitful partnership. He knew what they meant; they wanted him to sort out the problems with Lux. It reflected badly on the League.

Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. You didn't see them trying to do that with someone from Noxus and someone from Demacia. But because Piltover and Demacia are technically allied? Whoops, better make everyone into saints with each other.

At least Lux seems about as pleased with the arrangement as he is. She stares at the roster, her arms folded, and although her face is placid he can see that her shoulders are tenser than Jax's. He smirks and leans over.

"Don't look so excited," he whispers in her ear.

To her credit, she doesn't jump. Or even turn around.

"My apologies. I just can't help myself." She flashes a megawatt smile at him that makes his eyes hurt. Is it natural for teeth to be that freakishly white? "I'm so looking forward to having an excuse to beat you up."

She says it aloud. Venomously. Hmm, this must be her way of protesting against the League. He can side with that. "What's this," he says, obnoxiously. "The kitten's grown some claws."

It takes her three seconds to find a reply, which she covers with a shrill laugh. "Doesn't matter if it's a kitten's claws or a lion's claws. If there's enough poison on the tips, you'll die."

They're attracting significant glances now; enough to make him feel noticeably uncomfortable. He won't back down though. Not when Lux is here.

"So, you're gonna try to scratch me? How cute."

A devilish grin lights her face. "Oh, trust me, Ezreal, it'll be my genuine pleasure."

::-::

There's a lot of light and prisms and bolts of energy flying in the training room. Spectators swear that the duels are so intense that it seems they haven't even turned down the power levels. Of course, that's impossible. The League wouldn't allow a fatal injury. Right?

Then one of them gets hit. It takes two weeks in intensive care before recovery.

::-::

"How lovely of you to visit."

Ezreal says this placidly, but if he could, he would be shooting lasers out of his eyes.

"I know."

Lux takes a seat by his hospital bed, dumping an airtight container on his stomach. He twitches instinctively at the contact.

"What's this?"

Lux examines him, expressionless. "Food."

"Poisoned?"

"You can check."

She's not even surprised at his query.

He pops the lid. It's a hearty soup of some kind and it sends a heavenly scent drifting to his nose.

"It looks good."

"It _is_ good."

He takes a sip, not bothering to check it for poison.

"It's good."

"That's what I said."

He takes another sip. It settles against his throat, warming his body to the tips of his fingers.

"Thanks."

He says it plainly. No ulterior motives.

"You're welcome."

Her face seems open. He takes her words at face value.

_Thanks. You're welcome._ Such casual words.

As Ezreal continues to sip at the soup, reveling in the warm trickle that permeates his body, an alien thought crosses his mind: _Too bad. Perhaps in another life, we could have been good friends. _

* * *

**III.**

She finds it by mistake, really.

They're in the middle of a practice session and Ezreal suddenly stops, a look of utter panic crossing his face. For a moment, she thinks it's just a ploy to distract her, but without warning, he drops everything and hastens out of the training room.

She tries to joke to herself about his lack of control over his bladder, but something about his expression gives her a chill. Despite hating him, she can't help but be worried.

She quickly slips out of the training room, concentrating on detecting Ezreal's techmaturgical residue. For all his genius, the boy is incredibly sloppy; he left behind more Type V radiation than she's ever seen. It's a fairly simple task to track him out of the League, down a beaten, cobblestoned path, and up to the large mouth of some sort of cavern.

_Lux, why are you following him?_ she berates herself. _Here you are, getting your hopes up for no reason when you're probably just about to walk into his giant stash of inappropriate books or shrine to himself or—_

She stops.

A miraculous network of caverns lies before her, a narrow waterfall crashing from a high shelf into a delicate stream below. Wild plants which she has never seen before teem over the vast cavern floor; foreign creatures weave between their stems, peering at her with wide, curious eyes. And sitting on the ledge of the stream, a large sketchbook lying open-faced on his lap, is Ezreal.

One of his hands is extended gently to a poro—a poro? She's only seen them in Freljord—with one paw wrapped in a splint, nibbling at the pellets of food on his fingertips. A fond smile—a _real_ smile, which sends a soft glimmer to his eyes and a slight tilt to his lips—graces his face. He is handsome. She'd never seen that before. Or if she had, she'd chosen to ignore it.

"Who are you?" she whispers breathlessly.

He stiffens and whips around.

"How did you find this place?" he demands.

"I followed you," she says plainly.

His jaw clenches and he turns back to the poro, petting its head with a gentle hand. The poro ruffles its fur, nudging its head affectionately against his knee.

"You can hardly blame me," Lux continues. "Anyone would have, the way you ran out of the training room."

"He needed to be fed."

It's said softly; affectionately. She'd never thought that someone like him would be capable of speaking like that.

He lifts his eyes from the poro and fixes them on her face.

"Go ahead."

"What?"

"I know you want to laugh. What are you waiting for?"

"I don't want to laugh."

And it's true. She's surprised that it's true.

There is a long stretch of silence between them. Presently, Lux steps closer.

"May I pet him?"

She indicates to the poro. Ezreal evaluates her for a moment.

"...No."

It's said after a great deal of thought, and not maliciously. She decides to respect it.

"Why not?"

"I don't want to be friends with you."

Flatly. Honestly.

"Why not?"

"I just don't."

He eyes her for a moment before he continues.

"You annoy me."

She feels a spike of indignation.

"Well, you should listen to me, because now I know your secret."

The words are out of her mouth before she can stop them. He immediately clams up and she can sense it.

"I'm... I'm sorry. I simply meant—"

"Get out."

The words are flat. His knuckles are white.

"Ezreal—"

"I said. Get. Out."

She sees a dark blaze in his eyes and accommodates. The rest of the day is spent in confusion; why his reaction would be so intense to such a mild threat.

Then it comes to her.

He had _chosen_ to lead her to the cave. He didn't have to utilize his techmaturgy to get there; it was close enough that he could have made it in equal time by sprinting.

He had trusted her. He had humbled himself.

She had spat in his face by threatening him with his very gift.

* * *

**IV.**

Shallow, conceited, bratty, ignorant—

Why did he trust her? For one moment, he'd thought that maybe, just maybe, she might be different than he expected. He'd thought that he'd sensed something deeper to her during those lengthy training sessions. He'd thought that he'd seen something beyond her age in her eyes.

How ridiculous of him. He should have known better.

In the end, Luxanna Crownguard was just another shallow, ditzy, self-centered idiot who believed that the universe revolved around herself. Well, serves him right for giving humanity a shot.

He won't repeat the same mistake again.

* * *

**V.**

Lux doesn't see him for a while. He starts cutting practice; she's left in that large chamber, alone, attracting curious glances from all the other champions in the room. Stranger still, the League doesn't mention it. She knows that they see his absences—there's no way they couldn't with their breadth of influence. Somehow... Ezreal is dodging his duties, and the League is _letting_ him.

She tries to tell herself that it wasn't her fault and that Ezreal jumped to conclusions. She tries to be angry and think that he's immature and he's volatile and she's fortunate that she doesn't have to deal with him anymore.

None of it works.

She used to despise him. Now, she can't even make herself despise him.

On the twelfth day without a training partner, she decides to act. Clearly, the League is keeping silent on the affair, so she'll just have to take matters into her own hands.

She goes to the cave.

Ezreal is there and he's feeding the poro and he looks glum. Ezreal isn't supposed to look glum. He's always had that stupid, arrogant smile on his face, like he believes he's a divine gift to humanity and should be treated as such. He has no swagger. No gasconade. He's plain and bare, quiet, pensive.

"Who are you?" she asks. She whispers. Hoping to not startle him.

"Funny," Ezreal says coolly. "I didn't think you'd come." He turns his head, just slightly, and she can see that his eyes are burning. "Only someone with a conscience would come."

It burns her deeper than he knows it would. "Thanks for the compliment," she says drily.

"You know it wasn't one," Ezreal says. "Unless you're even more brainless than I thought."

His words are calculated and designed to cut. When she hated him, they were easy to take. They were easy to counter.

But she doesn't hate him anymore. So it cuts. And it stings.

"You've been dodging practice."

He turns back to the stream so she can't read his face. "What, missed me?"

"Yes."

He doesn't budge, but she knows that he's shocked.

"I don't hate you, Ezreal. And even if I did... I wouldn't divulge this cave to anyone."

_I'm sorry._

He doesn't turn. "So, what? Are we gonna kiss and make up?"

She wants to hate him. Wants to take the acidity of his words, the excessive barriers he's built up, and infuse them in her system, turning them into bitterness. But she can't. It's like a switch has been turned off in her brain and it's literally impossible for her to accept him as an enemy.

_Is this what guilt feels like? _she wonders absently.

"I'd rather not," she says.

Ezreal gets to his feet and turns around and maybe it's just the lighting, but Lux thinks that there might be a tiny little tear track on his right cheek. "I want to hate you, Lux. With every bone in my body."

"The feeling's mutual," she says.

"I don't even know why we're talking like this." He runs his fingers through his hair and it sticks up in a boyish, innocent way that makes her think of country fairs and tag and catching insects. "I don't even know why I'm talking to _you_."

Honestly. Truthfully. Without intentional venom—well, for the most part.

"For the same reason you trusted me with your secret," Lux says.

His eyes lock on hers. "And what would that be?"

She feels a smile playing at the ends of her lips. "You tell me," she says.

The poro darts out from a bush to nudge its nose against his knee. He absently scratches the top of its head, his eyes trailing away in thought.

There's a moment of long silence and she's not sure why. It feels awkward and incomplete, like neither of them are sure what to do now that the hatred is out of the way.

"...So," Ezreal says.

"So," Lux says. Deliberates. One moment. "Why—why don't we start by being friends?"

Friends. It's a weird word coming out of her mouth and twists her tongue awkwardly.

"Friends," Ezreal muses. He accepts.

Two people with a bond of mutual platonic affection. They don't see it working—sworn enemies, archrivals, the very _opposite_ of friends.

And it doesn't... but not for the reason they think.

* * *

**VI.**

Considering the intensity of their former hatred, it is frankly startling how easily they slip into the role of lifelong friends.

Snappy insults meld into mischievous banter. Deadly duels meld into friendly rivalry. The masks that they uphold around everyone else slip away when they are in each others' company.

It's weird. Disturbing. Alien. Perfect. Somehow, it fits. The two fakers, together in confidence.

The other champions notice, of course. There's crude gossip from the Noxians (_"Think they've slept together?"_) and backhanded compliments from the Demacians (_"You two are a _match_ made in _heaven_!"_) and blunt disapproval from the Piltoverans (_"They're just weird."_) and, of course, nobody from Ionia and Bandle City and Zaun and Freljord and Bilgewater care in the slightest.

When they're with everyone else, Lux is that overly-positive annoying ditz and Ezreal is that overly-eager arrogant rascal just like they're expected to be. But when they're at their cave, their refuge, their home, they're someone else.

Ezreal is a born adventurer and can only sit still for so long without spelunking down some obscure cavern or another. He's determined and he's infallible and he's quiet, so intensely concentrated that not one word ever passes his lips. He'd rather journal and he'd rather climb and he'd rather take his many risks than boast with no backup. He knows it's a surprise to Lux that an alleged blusterer could actually love silence so much.

"Why are you always so... talkative?" she says. "Around other people, I mean."

Clearly, chatting is not his natural state. She doesn't understand why he's so calm, so stoic, so _silent_, and then turns around to become the world's biggest loudmouth.

He shrugs. "Killing two birds with one stone."

"What do you mean?"

"People bore me." He idly fiddles with the edge of his journal, his eyes distant. "My attitude's a people repellant."

"Don't you ever get lonely?"

"Not really. Too much to explore." A glint catches his eye. "When you look into the dark of a long cavern... Don't you just feel like it's calling you?"

His pen is hovered over his notebook, which depicts a semi-circular abstract shadow, at the center of which glows two asymmetrical eyes. Lux idly wonders if he's ever gotten into life-threatening situations during his explorations. He seems to enjoy meeting monsters. She envies that.

"You said it was killing two birds in one stone," she says presently. "What's the other bird?"

He eyes her for a moment, ponders, and smirks. "Well, you know. They envy me. Not everyone can be so magically gifted."

Unlike his alter ego, who would say this in a very pretentious fashion, the current Ezreal says it coolly and flatly, as if stating a simple fact. It _is_ truth. She heard of his natural affinity for magic before she even met him. The fact that he resided in Piltover? An added bonus.

"So you act like a jerk to rub it in their faces?" she teases.

"No. But it makes 'em underestimate me. It's kind of a Piltover thing. Think Cait. She has that weird hat, right? Doesn't matter that she's all serious, her hat makes people want to laugh. Jinx is deranged, but she's fairly petite compared to the others. Corki has that ridiculous voice and Heimer—don't get me started. Ziggs is a Yordle, so everyone looks down on him. Orianna looks fragile, Jayce has the pretty-face, and Vi has that eye-numbing hair. It startles opponents. Can give us an edge."

Lux considers this for a moment, then laughs. "No. I just think that you like to annoy people."

He grins. "Three birds with one stone."

"So, Mr. Talented. Ever felt the wrath of miffed peers? I would think that your school would prohibit you from blasting everyone."

He closed his sketchbook and lay down, aimlessly staring at the cavern ceiling. "...I wasn't around much, honestly. Ditched a lot. Please, Lux, exploring trumps homework any day." He smirks slightly. "My classmates knew me as the quiet and shy type."

"Wow, what _happened_?" (This said in a similar tone to if a serial killer claimed that he once regularly volunteered at an animal shelter.)

He chuckled. "You seem awfully curious about my school life. What, were you the top dog at your school? Wanna know about the perspective of us lowly peasants?"

Her face suddenly melds into a blank mask and Ezreal immediately realized that he's somehow breached a topic he shouldn't have. Her eyes are distant, unseeing, and though they're pointed in the direction of the cavern stream, something tells Ezreal that they're much, much farther away, in a distant place and a distant time. The air slips from light and snappy to stifling, dark, expanding until it slicks every wall of the cavern with a heavy-handed gloom.

"Top dog, huh?" she says airily.

"Forget what I said," Ezreal says, sitting up abruptly. "So, Demacia vs. Noxus next week, huh? Feeling up to—"

"Ezreal."

Her eyes lift and fix on his.

"It's okay."

Her lips part; a soft breath escapes between them. There's a brief silence that stretches for one, two, three moments—then she breathes in, breathes out, and begins.

"They said I was gifted too, you know." She wraps her arms around herself—absently, as if she doesn't even know she's doing it. It makes her appear disturbingly vulnerable. "They admitted me to the College of Magic at eleven. When I graduated, I had just turned fifteen. They knew my naïveté. Said I could be an amazing 'gift to Demacia' if I used my talents for the military."

Ezreal's stomach bubbles with trepidation. "What happened?"

Her face turns away and she says nothing.

"Lux..."

"He did something to me."

He frowns, his mind shorting. "Who did what?"

She doesn't move. "The high commander of the Demacian Military. I was two weeks into my commission and he called me into his office."

The significance of her words strikes him. He feels nauseous. "No..."

"I remember it so clearly. He invited me to have a seat. He spoke kindly. He claimed he needed to discuss something about reverse engineering. Shortly thereafter, I realized that there was no one else in the rooms I thought nothing of it until he moved close..."

"That's enough."

He knows she is crying. He can't see the tears on her cheeks, but he can hear them in her voice.

"I'm not letting you blame yourself for something like that."

"I was a fool."

"No."

"Naive."

"No. They shouldn't have admitted you into the military in the first place."

"My parents wouldn't have had it otherwise. Oh, Ez, they were so proud. They were practically glowing. They kept saying how their children were so very talented—"

"Lux."

Her shoulders are beginning to shake. He touches them, gently.

"You are clean. You've always been."

She crumples in at this, as if it's something she's been craving to hear. He extends his arm and she falls against his chest, tossing away her pride, letting herself be enveloped by his embrace.

"The day after that—that meeting, I had my first kill, the first blood of a man on my hands. The day after that, my little sister passed away; most people didn't even know about her, she was always sick. My fault. Everything. Contaminated, filthy, cursed. They said I was brilliant—but it was because I lost myself in magic so I didn't have to think. Oh, Ez, you don't know what I've done."

"Not what you've done. What you've suffered through."

He runs his hand gently across her back. She feels small in his arms.

"I think... I think I became a very hateful person. I wanted everyone to see the hell I had seen..."

"I don't think so."

She laughs slightly. "I went out of my way to annoy you."

"You were nice to everyone else. Smiling. Laughing. Always."

He had hated it at the time, but now, he wants nothing more but to see a spark of life in her eyes.

"Was I," she muses listlessly.

"Yeah. There was a lot of screwed up stuff in your life. Darkness. You didn't want it happening to anyone else. And what's darkness's best counter? Light. So... you defend people. With light."

"What a noble picture you paint."

He lifts her chin so that she is looking directly in his eyes. "Heh, I hated it. Your smiles were always really... fake. Everything looked plastic-y. It annoyed me. But... you were just trying your best."

"Ahh, king of hypocrites. Who's the one walking around with a facade of devil-may-care, obnoxious over confidence?"

"I do that because I don't want people to like me. People annoy me."

"Your actual self is so much more pleasant."

"I don't like being pleasant. Being pleasant annoys me."

"What doesn't annoy you?"

"You. Well, actually, you annoy me in how much I like you. Liking people annoys me."

She's strangely silent at this. He tries to gauge her face, hoping he hasn't hurt her.

"Lu?"

"You... like me? Even after everything I've told you? You're not... disgusted?"

He feels appalled, but he commands his expression.

"Do I look disgusted?"

"No."

"Then I'm probably not."

"You looked annoying, and you weren't."

"I didn't look annoying. I looked annoyed."

"Were you?"

"Yeah. At everything."

His expression softens.

"And I still am. I'm annoyed that someone took advantage of an innocent girl. I'm annoyed that she felt the need to blame herself. I'm annoyed that all this time, I was annoyed at her."

The ends of her mouth pull into a small, fragile, _genuine_ smile.

"To be fair, I was pretty annoying."

A hint of mischief catches him.

"Get rid of 'annoying' and repeat that sentence."

To his satisfaction, her smile widens. "Wow, really? That was unbelievably cheesy."

"Your face is unbelievably cheesy."

"Oh, Ez, grow up! Those jokes are getting old."

"Do they belong—"

"—in a museum?"

He actually _winks_. "I see I've rubbed off on you."

She can only grin wider in response. She probably looks like a complete idiot, but she can't help it; her chest is so light that she feels she can sing. Years. Years of burdens and shadows, shed from her skin. She is free.

She is free.

* * *

**VII.**

Somewhere along the way, lines blur.

Their teasing adapts a nearly—dare she say it—_flirtatious_ tone. And the touches—she doesn't know why they start, but they keep happening. The casual brush of shoulders. The slightly lingering hand on a back. The poking of cheeks. One time, after a particularly panic-inducing run-in with a slumbering cave beast, they—embrace. Not one of those friendship-only side hugs, but a lasting one, two bodies pressed together, hearts shuddering, stomachs flipping, limbs shaking with the aftermath of excessive adrenaline.

Somewhere along the way, they become more than friends.

There's not really a single defining moment that marks the transition—it's more of a natural development, one that has rounded edges and defies description. Somehow, a pat on the back becomes an arm thrown around a shoulder. An accidental brush of hands becomes more and more frequent, until one day, Ezreal silently laces his fingers through hers. They don't say a word.

There's one particularly memorable day. A fight, sort of. A lighthearted one regarding the name of Ezreal's poro.

"His name is Exkerbius Havolty Garlandson XIV," Ezreal says petulantly on the matter.

"It is not!" she says. "You suck at names. You've lost any privilege to name him."

"But—"

"It's ridiculous," she says. "Would you want to walk around with the name Exkerbius Havolty Garlandson XIV?"

"I would, more than Luxanna Crownguard," he fires back, but there's no bite to his words.

"Really?" Lux says in mock surprise. "I wouldn't have thought that. 'Luxanna' would suit you far more."

"It's a girl's name!"

"Exactly."

"Lu!"

A laugh unexpectedly peals from her lips—genuine, melodic, sweet. It catches her off guard just as it does Ezreal. He ducks in, suddenly, spontaneously, and presses his lips against hers for a breath of two seconds before retracting. As sure and sweet as her laugh had been.

There is a pause, a long one, and a smile is fixed on Lux's mouth—not her usual one, with deadness in her eyes, but with warmth and joy.

"His name will be Kiwi," Lux says.

Kiwi. An adorable name.

"Perfect," he muses. Then backwheels. "Exkerbius Havolty Garlandson XIV would be more perfect."

"No, it wouldn't," Lux says without an edge.

That was how their first kiss happened: both climactic and anticlimactic. But that is Ez and that is Lux; mature and childish, worldly and innocent, cherry and melancholy, arrogant and humble. Two-sided coins, the both of them. Opposite... and identical.

* * *

**VIII.**

She loves him.

She loves him like she has never loved anyone in her whole life.

She loves the way his eyes gleam at the fortuity of hazardous adventure, the way his eyebrows lower slightly as his skillful pencil dances across his sketchbook, the way his words are clipped and blunt and he'll speak honestly and sensitively simultaneously.

So, when he presents her with a ring during a quiet day at the cavern, of course she says yes.

::-::

He loves her.

He loves her like he has never loved anyone in his whole life.

He loves the way her genuine smile is brighter than a lantern, the way she breathlessly laughs when she's _truly_ amused, the way she's confident and shy at the same time, the way she can completely understand his unorthodox theories regarding the finer points of techmaturgy.

So, after many, many years of battling in the League, of raising children, of the daily mundane of cleaning and cooking and teasing and reading, of the daily extraordinary of adventuring and inventing and reverse-engineering, they are laid to rest, side by side, buried within the cavern next to their departed sentinel, Kiwi the poro. And Ezreal has arranged the following to be engraved on their tombstones:

**Here lies**  
**LUXANNA C. ESTENFELD**  
Who led the way for many with her Guiding Light

**Here lies**  
**EZREAL ESTENFELD**  
The Explorer who would be lost without his Light

_fin_


End file.
